


Take Away My Self Destruction

by PhoenixDragon



Series: Soul to Squeeze: Pitstop on the Farewell Tour [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Dark, Gen, Mild Language, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixDragon/pseuds/PhoenixDragon





	Take Away My Self Destruction

**~Take Away My Self Destruction~**

  


The Doctor froze mid-step, a small puff of dust grinding up from his boot, profile rigid with shock.

Dean breathed through the stillness, startled that he had dared to say it out loud.

_Call a spade a spade..._

His own experiences, his _own_ suicide for what he deemed the greater good, looming over them both like a grizzled crow. The shadowed coldness of it seeped through the sleepy heat of the day and dashed reality over the both of them, leaving them drowning with the horrible truth that lurked underneath.

“It is _not_ ,” the Time-Lord whispered, the hum of his voice tilting across the Impala's roof, even as he bled his words to the ground at his feet. “You...you wouldn’t -”

“Understand, right?” Dean asked quietly. “I...wouldn’t _understand_ -”

“No, you wouldn’t!” The alien tried to rally, but seemed to choke on any potential anger, his tone more pleading than cutting. “This isn’t just about _Sam_ , this isn’t even just about you and your fight! This is about the potential existence of _thousands_ of worlds, _thousands_ of societies! I-I _have_ to do this! It doesn’t make it easier when you have...have -”

“ _Friends_?” Dean interjected, keeping it soft. The Doctor rocked on the edge of something even more horrible than his own death, and the alien’s bewildering scatter of emotions was almost too much when combined with his lack of fight. “People who love you?”

“No one _loves_ me,” the Doctor protested, seeming almost horrified by the idea. “No-no one _should_. I am far older…I have _long_ outlived my own time.”

Something pulled painfully in Dean’s chest at the Doctor’s unwavering certainty, his belief in what he had voiced. The idea that someone might care even a little seeming to leave the Time-Lord shocked and drifting, and the sheer _loneliness_ that implied…

“Your regenerations say otherwise.” It was the only thing he could say without cracking or screaming in wordless dismay.

“I have destroyed _whole worlds_ and brought genocide to my own _race_ ,” the Doctor hissed, his voice raw, singed as he tried to make his death justifiable in Dean’s eyes. “I think it’s about time, don’t you?”

“I know you’ve _saved_ whole worlds,” Dean shot back, lips numb at how quickly this was spinning beyond his control. The Doctor already determined, already well set on this path. “And saved your own race several times. I know you’ve saved people that wouldn’t have made it otherwise -”

“You know _nothing_! You –” The Doctor rasped, voice hoarse as he tried to get himself back under wraps, turning so his back was to the Impala, shoulders tight as he fought for breath.

Dean found himself breathing with him, eyes stinging as he gave himself the opportunity to feel what had been said. His mind still staggered with the facts in front of him: the Doctor was going to die…and he seemed reluctant to stop it – hell, he seemed to be running head-long _into_ it, which was recklessness of a whole different caliber.

_Or was it?_

/You know nothing/

Ohh, how that still gutted...even after all this time.

Silence sat thick between them, the both of them taking a moment to get their emotions back in order, because that was what they did. Not generally with each _other_ ; but the Doctor was setting a whole new standard with his strange behavior. It left Dean feeling like an outsider, like a mere acquaintance instead of a close friend…it wasn’t a feeling he particularly liked.

Winchester shook his head, something inside his chest cracking, scraped raw by familiarity of all of this: how little the Doctor seemed to care for his own life. He didn’t know what had happened with the Ponds, he didn’t know what the Doctor had faced recently – but whatever it was, it had worn the Time-Lord down. The man who believed in the utter sanctity of life in all its forms, the man who fought with weapons in the shape of words, who could disarm with a smile and well-timed patter…

And his horror at the idea of someone out there, _anyone_ actually _giving_ a fuck –

It makes it harder, walking to your death knowing you left someone behind. Dean had done it several times, and he didn’t always have a backup plan, a way out. The Doctor always did – _always_ – he was famous for it…except for _this_ Doctor. Dean could almost entertain the idea that ‘this Doctor’ could have easily jettisoned the relationships around him anticipating what was coming, but he dismissed it just as quickly. He’d only spent short amounts of time with the man and _he_ couldn’t be shaken like that. So odds were (with the type of Companions the Time-Lord was known to pick), he couldn’t convince anyone to 'just let him go’.

Which meant he had forced them to do it.

Equally, this resistance at the idea of friends, people he could lean on, sent chills down Dean’s spine. It spoke volumes, how easily the Time-Lord dismissed those who cared for him. And it stacked the idea of ‘reckless suicide’, over plain ‘death’ distinctly higher. He didn’t want to know what could push the Doctor – _the Doctor_ – to this point, what terrors and half-truths could bring him unquestioning to the brink, and leave him staring alone into the abyss with no one to care…and with such a dead certainty that no one would.

“You say I know nothing…but I know enough,” Dean ventured, his voice stronger, _steadier_ than he thought it would be. “I know you’ve saved this world so many times we could probably write a book filled with just the numbers and it would put your average yellow-pages to shame. I know you’ve saved Dad - you’ve saved Sam and me at least _twice_ now, by my reckoning. Is it so much to ask you to save yourself?”

The answering silence shivered with the unknown, the Doctor’s stillness more telling than mere words ever could be. And the horrors it spoke of left Dean dry-mouthed with sorrow. Castiel taught him friendship and how wrenching it could be when it was taken away from you so _suddenly_ , without the slightest hint of warning. The Doctor was teaching him that he had no control over such things, and that any control you thought you _did_ have was an illusion.

_Like an old man with a youthful face._

But it didn’t mean he had any right to give up. Free Will meant you had to _try_ , even when Fate laid the cards. Fate was a greedy, grasping bitch, but Dean Winchester had one up on Her by being a stubborn asshole.

“Tell me what to do here, Doc.” Quiet, but pressing, forcing the Time-Lord to respond.

When he finally did, he wasn’t as animated as Dean wished. It seemed all that pushing had shattered what confidence the Doctor had in his own lies, leaving him _thinner_ somehow.

“Stop _calling_ me that,” the alien rumbled, but it was all bluster with no heat behind it. His back was still turned and it left nothing for Dean to get a read off of. “And there is nothing that _can_ be done.”

As another tick of silence followed, the Doctor turned to stare out over a patchy field on the other side of the road. The distant call of birds and the stillness of the untraveled road they were parked alongside of seemed to sum up the desolation of the whole conversation. So much had been said but nothing had been given way to, leaving them in a stalemate that could span Time itself.

“Nothing can be done,” the Doctor continued at last. Turning back to the Impala, his fingers brushed over the chrome of her passenger window, reverent and lonely, but gaze never met Dean’s once. A frown settled deep in the lines of his mouth and the corners of his eyes, weary bitterness leaking through his words. “Least of all by you.”

Dean breathed through the direct barb, knowing it to be the last ditch effort of a man drowning with no rope to anchor him. Somehow, Dean had become the weight around the Doctor’s neck, lost in a sea of no possibilities.

If only it didn’t _hurt_ so much.

“Now, if you are done,” – _hurting me, toying with me, questioning me_ – “we can forget this whole useless conversation, get in the car, turn her around and I’ll be gone like I never was. That’s… _usually_ how you prefer it, right?”

Dean didn’t answer, suppressing a flinch, the accuracy of the statement making it more cutting than it should have been. He was too tired to be angry, though, fear and sorrow settling heavy over his shoulders, weighing him down with too many regrets.

_No time, never enough_ time _…_

But the Doctor was speaking, determined to drive home how futile the last half hour had been, trying his damnedest to make what friendship they had more acquaintance than a bond. Dean had been through too much with this man to ever let happen, and they both knew it. It wouldn’t have worked if the tables had been turned, if _Dean_ was the one to push this point. They had already done this dance once, and not that long ago; the ploy had _almost_ worked then ( _almost_ ), so there was no way in hell it was going to fly now.

But obviously not for the lack of trying on the Time-Lord’s part.

“Quit beating your head against a wall over this,” the Doctor said sharply, the edged tone of his words releasing Dean from the responsibility of caring. “There’s no sense in… _pointless_ this whole _thing_ –” then a muttered, “can’t _believe_ She brought me here.”

“ _Why_?” Dean interrupted, the sudden need to know outweighing everything else. The urge to have this all make sense over-rode the quiet pull to give in, to fold his hand and let the Doctor have his way, leave this whole day in the dirt at their feet, and let the Chevy spirit them away from the pain that saturated the very air they breathed.

“Why _what_?” Was the irritable response.

“Why do you have to die?” Because that was the only question in the end. Suicide or no – Fate be damned – there had to be a driving force, a reason for the Time-Lord’s headlong rush into oblivion. He was too selfish (in many ways) to just let go, no matter how bad things got. There could only be one or two answers; neither would make his death any easier to take, but it would make that death a little less senseless…a little more comfortable to breathe through.

_Why?_

The question hung in the air like it was pinned there – such a simple thing, but with so much behind it. The Doctor blinked slowly, the carefully crafted blankness he carried around with him like a two-edged weapon smoothing his features, like he had never considered the _idea_ , much less the inevitable outcome. He licked his lips, meeting Dean’s gaze as he weighed how to answer him, before settling on his fallback method of avoidance.

“What does it _matter_? It is my time, that should be good enough.” The Doctor’s shoulders rose and fell once, an aborted shrug that said there was more to the story than he was ready to tell; even (maybe _especially_ ) with all it took to get them to this point. “That’s all the ‘ _why_ ’ that is needed.”

“What happens if you _don’t_?”

Everything stilled – even the call of the birds was absent, like the universe had shuddered under the blasphemy of Dean’s suggestion. The Doctor stared at him, the curled brim of the Stetson throwing shadows and blocking any expression that might have shone from the Doctor’s face; Dean didn’t know whether he was grateful or infuriated at that.

“I-I can’t even...” – _contemplate that_ – “this is not a question you want to ask, Dean. This...my death is a _fixed point_.” The certainty, the urgency in the alien’s voice was like a dash of cold water; it pled for Dean’s comprehension even as he shied away from the question. His hands rose to emphasize his words, fingers crooked to ward Dean’s protests away, palms out to drive his own protest home.

“Time can be rewritten.” He said it quickly, using the Doctor’s own revelations against him.

“No.” An almost frantic shake of the head, denial and resistance all at once. “Not this - not _this_ time -”

“Why not?” Dean asked mulishly.

_When it is needed_ most _– what makes this less_ important _?!_

“I can only reboot the universe so many times, Dean.” A humorless smile that melted as quickly as it had started, acknowledging the absence of anything funny about their exchange. “And...I’m tired. I’m _old_. You lot can do this yourselves - you’ve more than proven that. You don’t...you don't _need_ me anymore.”

_The hell we_ don't _..._

“Whatever happened to ‘stupid apes’?” Dean hedged, not able to just let it go, even as his own will to fight about it lagged in the face of the Doctor's refusal to budge.

The Doctor placed his palms flat on the edge of the Impala's roof, chin to his chest as he blew out a noisy exhalation, shaking off his previous statement. Though Dean didn't miss the brief lift to the corner of his mouth, the quirk of his lips at Winchester's retort another deflection of a kind, more self-depreciating than actual humor.

“Stop that – you know I didn’t...” He bobbed his head and shrugged, a stiff tilt to his shoulders, pausing for another steadying breath, refusing to get drawn in all over again. The mention of his previous, callous statements only made him retreat further into himself. “Just...get me back to Sexy.”

Dean sighed as the Time-Lord popped open the passenger door with a groaning creak, one foot already inside even as Dean spoke up, trying to stop him from fully retreating and dismissing what had gone down between them with little more than a shrug and a wave from his hand. This had to have been important. It _was_ important. It couldn't just be left to a dirt road in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to drift away, with no point or purpose behind it all.

_How can such an intelligent being be so fucking_ stupid _?_

This was about more than their friendship. This was bigger than them, but Dean didn't want what they had to linger and die here like this, either. He didn't want the whole of his time with the Doctor balled up and thrown away like so much garbage; he _knew_ the Doctor cared for him –

_Why else would he do something so goddamned crazy?_

But he needed him to give a fuck about himself, too. Otherwise the whole of their experiences together meant nothing.

Dean needed him to be the _Doctor_.

“Doctor.” Just one single word, uttered to make him stop. To make him just _listen_.

“ _Please_...Dean,” the Time-Lord croaked, unable to even look him in the face, lips pulled tight in an unhappy grimace as he sagged against the door. The response was anything but what he expected. The man who had (practically by himself) defeated a horde of demons on his last legs with little more than a car, a sonic screwdriver, endless hope and enthusiasm sounded so _wretched_ , so close to defeat, it physically staggered Dean. The low plea to be left alone, for Dean to just stand down and let it _go_ bleeding from his voice, the slump of his shoulders like an open wound. “I-I’ll beg, is that what you want?”

Dean recoiled mentally, unable to even _imagine_.

“ _Jesus_ , Doc, no -”

“I have...I _have_ to _do_ this.” His tone brooked no arguments – no mercies asked or given. “There is no _choice_. The reasoning doesn’t matter. It just _is_.”

Dean bit down fiercely on his lower lip, the ache of his teeth against the tender flesh grounding him, stopping him from striding to the other side of the car and hitting the Doctor until he felt better. He wanted to hit him until that damnable look of walking death in his eyes faded, leaving nothing but the Storm that existed under the Doctor's gentle nature. He was more than willing to face that Storm if it meant the Doctor would even attempt to fight back.

This dance was exhausting, but he wasn't going to give up and let the Dark win. He had never let the Dark win before and he damn sure knew the Doctor had never let it take him down, either. If their places were reversed, the Doctor wouldn't stop, wouldn't quit until he had beat back the Dark. Dean just needed to know one thing...

“I just want to – what happened to you?”

He kept it gentle, letting no accusations peek through, just a genuine need that stilled the Doctor midway to the passenger seat, unable to resist a plea even as he raced to the end. It gave Dean a glimmer of hope, seeing that. It was a low way to get him to listen, but you did what you had to when you were fighting for a friend's life, when you fought for family.

/‘ _Any weapon in the arsenal; the softest voice can hit the hardest. All love is a double-edged sword; but sometimes it is the only one worth wielding._ ’/

' _He said that to me once..._ ' – then – ' _He's still in there._ '

But Dean didn't know if that thought was hopeful or tragic, considering where the Time-Lord was eventually headed.

“You used to fight, to _question_...what happened to that?” Dean held his hands out, fingers spread as if conceding a point. His voice was rough as he tried to keep his own emotions dialed down and softened at the edges. “Please. We’ll go, just - tell me why you’ve given up.”

“I _haven’t_.” It was another protest, but there was just enough life behind it to give Dean hope. He needed to know the Doctor still had it in him to fight, even if he was still frozen between retreat and advance, stance wavering, _bending_.

Dean's foot was in the door, all he had to do was approach _just right_.

“You _have_ ,” he blurted, before he could catch himself. Then he took a breath, working to even out his tone, and continued to inquire instead of accuse. “You _are_. Doctor –”

“I failed.”

All the air in Dean's throat evaporated, ice slipping across his skin from the flat finality of the Doctor's statement – those two individual words the equivalent of a verbal neutron bomb. He almost wished the Time-Lord hadn't picked that moment to look up, the Impala a welcome wall between them, a shield from the utter devastation in the alien's gaze. He didn't look just old or even _ancient_ ; he looked as if the weary troop of his years had fallen on him, the weight of them crushing all life from his bones, crippling him beneath them.

He looked like a man that had already died –

_days, months,_ years _ago_

But just wasn't smart enough to lay down and stop _breathing_.

Dean wanted him to shut up.

He wanted to rewind back the last two hours and wake up beside his tools and his baby, a day of solid work behind him with nothing more than a cold beer and a bellyful of stew to look forward to. He didn't want to hear this, even though it was what he had been pushing for.

Even though the Doctor needed to say it, have it out in the open – to make it _real_ , if nothing else – Dean still didn’t want to hear it.

The Doctor looked at Dean with those calm, dead eyes and the words tumbled from his lips – his tone as serene and guileless as if he was remarking on the weather. Lingering traces of self-loathing, familiar and _painful_ , were etched in the shapes of his speech, drawing thicker and tighter with each word that passed through his lips.

“For the final time, just when it counted _most_ …I failed.”

The silence ticked between them as he let Dean absorb the implications of what he was saying, let it run across the stretch of nerves just under Dean's skin, nestle below his sternum and dig and dig and dig –

“If it was just me,” the Doctor paused, face tilting to the sky, blinking rapidly. His features were as cold and blank as fresh snow, the words seeming to never touching their creator, even as they ripped him bloody from the inside out. “If...if it was just _me_ , it wouldn't be so bad. But I have been arrogant, _blind_...outmatched by the _simplest_ –“

He fell quiet, eyes closing as if he could unsee what he had done. Dean couldn't breathe, couldn’t even _blink_ as the Time-Lord came apart before his eyes, unable to even say if the Doctor was actually aware of him standing there as the alien faced what had brought him to this point.

It could have been the first time, it could have been the hundredth time – pain like this didn't ebb away. It disabled and disarmed. It left you crumbling underneath the fading afternoon sky on a deserted stretch of road with nothing but the blood pumping in your veins, and the oxygen in your lungs to keep you this side of surviving. Leaving only the will to either fix it at all costs or end it if there was no other answer.

Dean had been there twice, maybe three times in his very short life Topside and countless times more Below. The Doctor's pain was so thick he could taste it: a weary copper bluntness that slicked down the back of your throat, clenching into an ache that couldn't be reached, sitting just below your bones where no sunlight could soothe it, no forgiveness could ease it. He had been swept with this very kind of pain when he first officially met the Doctor, his nightmares just the tip of the iceberg – and the Doctor had eased it somehow.

He had let Dean rail at him (even as sick as he, himself, had been), listened to his silence and helped him sleep dreamlessly. The pain had never been truly conquered, it probably never would be – but between the Doctor, Sam (as fucked as he was at the time), Bobby and Castiel, it had been made manageable. He could face it and so much _more_ now due to the madman in a box. He fell from the sky and saved Dean when he needed to be rescued from the Hell he had brought back with him...

The least he could do was try to listen, maybe even save the Doctor from his own Hell.

Dean owed him that much.

He eased the driver's side door open, the rusty screech of it shaking the Doctor from his mental loop. The Time-Lord looked winded, dazed as he fell back to the here and now. Dean took mercy on him, knowing the Doctor needed to get back under control. He averted his gaze from the stricken desolation in the man's eyes, letting him gather his dignity back around himself, knowing all too well how much one needed that when brought to one's metaphorical knees.

Dean worried that he had gone too far. Whatever the Doctor thought he had done, whatever wrong he believed he had committed was paralyzing enough to face; coupled with humiliation (real or imagined), the man may very well break. Dean couldn’t tell if he had pushed too hard or just as far as was needed; either way he had to show he was there to help pick up the pieces...not make it worse.

Not only did the Doctor need some space, Dean needed some, too. His hands shook wildly as he settled on the leather seat, heart thudding as if he had just run a marathon. The stretch of his skin as he white-knuckled the wheel felt numb and icy, but the Chevy's interior was a warm balm to his jittering nerves.

Watching the unshakeable Doctor vibrate apart before his eyes was like watching Sam do a slow slide into the hands of evil. It was unthinkable, _terrifying_.

Dean willed his body, his hands to calm, trying to wrap himself in the solidness of everything he knew as home. The Doctor needed him to listen, just this once, so he forced himself to breathe slowly and focus. He was all too aware that the Doctor would be seated next to him again within moments, and he needed his _friend_ , he needed someone who would keep him held in high regard, not kick him when he was down. It seemed the Doctor didn't have many of those kinds of friends left...if he had any left at all.

Dean's heart ached, every muscle in his body strained beyond exhaustion – so he could well imagine how the Doctor felt about now. Guilt and anger were like acid: they ate at you until there was nothing left and what they _did_ leave behind…

He swallowed thickly, keeping his gaze averted when the Doctor finally folded himself into the Impala. Barely a minute had passed since the alien had spilled a glimpse into the horrors he held close, but it felt like hours, the seconds falling away ( _beneath_ ), so slowly Dean could feel each one as it brushed past.

Silence asserted itself, fragile and heavy between them, as the Time-Lord considered what he should say, just how much of his pain he should give away. The motives were selfish from one view, sacrificial from another. Dean knew all too well the instinctive reaction to keep loved ones wrapped tight, unwilling to burden them with your sorrows. He kept his eyes on his lap, letting his hands slide off the steering wheel to lie limply on his thighs, keeping himself open if the Doctor needed it, yet reserved so he wouldn't feel further overwhelmed.

He was seconds away from deciding for him - from digging the keys out of his pocket to start the Chevy back to rumbling life, mercy granted in the hum of her engine – when the Doctor finally spoke; his words a tired whisper of sound, like he had been over them again and again ( _maybe he has_ ), their creases worn down and faded like soft cloth. The Doctor's voice was a soothing, steady hum against Dean's ears, even when filled with such pervasive sorrow.

“If it was just _me_ …” The chuckle that escaped him was more like a sob than the laugh (Dean was sure), he'd intended it to be. But he seemed more settled, stronger than he had been minutes before. Dean didn't know whether to be proud or horrified. “I devastated them...the Ponds? They're safe, _now_ , but they'll never be...” The Doctor's fingers twisted and clawed against one another, the turmoil in the Time-Lord's heart playing out in the dance of his hands; hands that had hauled Dean to safety, punctuated statements and soothed away hurts. They'd never been used to _emphasize_ hurt. “They won't be _Amy_ and _Rory_ anymore. When she called me back from the Void, I-I broke them all over again...I –”

Dean remained silent, letting him spin it out. He tried to resist the urge to interrupt, biting down on his tongue until it bled, the taste the only thing that could make sense of the pain spilling across the cabin. The Doctor took a deep breath and another, forcing his hands to still. It was somehow worse, that stillness, seeming to say everything he couldn't.

“I've done...a lot of damage in my time,” the Time-Lord rasped. “So, so _much_ – and this time...it's fitting, it really is. This time...this time I blundered so badly I created my _own death_. I destroyed three innocent lives because I couldn't just…”

_Leave it well enough alone._

_Put my curiosity, my vanity aside._

_Stop being so_ lonely.

Dean heard every thought as if they had been spoken aloud, and wondered if Amy and Rory saw it the same as the Doctor did: if Amy still felt a sense of pride, saving her best friend from the Void; if Rory even knew that (somehow) the Doctor had set Amy in his path, found them the true and deep love they weren't meant to have otherwise.

Because he _did_ things like that.

The Ponds’ destinies were so entwined with the Doctor's, if he had been forever removed...there would always be something _missing_. A longing that couldn't be touched. It might have eventually driven them apart, this nameless feeling that had no definition because it didn’t _exist_.

Yes, the Doctor could be reckless, stupid, thoughtless, immature, destructive and dismissive. But he could also be kind, warm, enthusiastic, hopeful, wondrous, sweet and so damned smart it was fucking _frightening_. All these things combined made him _more_ : more human than most people Dean knew, more relatable and his flaws made him more _real_.

He probably had done a lot of damage. The Doctor might not be wrong there, but Dean was sure he had done less than most beings with a shorter life span. His mistakes and missteps were spread out over a longer span of time, almost a millennia. And yet, he was still _worried_ over it…

But Dean kept still, kept quiet. He let the Doctor talk, tell it as he saw it.

He was a talker, that was for sure; everything a funny quip, anecdote or lecture to be pulled out at the drop of a hat, his tongue slick, silver-edged and razor sharp.

That was, until it came to how he saw _himself_. Then it was all razor underneath: biting, bleeding cuts that seeped slow and stubborn, every word pushed out like it had been carved out of him. The deeper the slice, the faster the bleed; any possible hatreds and negatives reserved to be weighed against his own soul (his soul coming out lacking more often than not).

Dean knew that. He understood it. So he let him talk, let him get the worst of the poison out, just praying he had the tools needed to tend to the Doctor's wounds.

“I couldn't leave it alone...leave _them_ alone. And it cost them more than it could ever cost me,” the Doctor continued breathlessly, eyes closed to shield Dean from the worst of his torment, his voice gaining strength as he talked it through. But Dean had his doubts that the situation being laid out hurt the Time-Lord any less than it hurt the Ponds...eventually their pain would end – but _his_? Who knew how long he carried his?

“It cost them _everything_ – one day, it will take their life. But I can _stop_ that, I can stop from breaking their world and this universe. And it is past time for me to quit acting foolish and running from what’s in front of me.” He finally found enough bravery to look Dean in the eyes, the horror in his voice almost physical, the endless span of his years barely contained within him. “I-I can’t even _begin_ to...I broke Amy’s faith in me, Dean. Her _faith_. I tore it to shreds right in front of her, made her see the fallacy behind it. But that wasn't the worst of it, the hits just never stop coming for them – Doctor Song, _River_ \- River is the Weapon.”

Dean swallowed hard, weakly grasping what he was getting at, but somehow missing the mark. River always seemed to be important, just _there_ , but –

“Their child, Dean. The baby the Silence took, the one I could never save, the one I could never talk about. They took Amy and Rory's baby girl, their _daughter_ , and twisted her into the ultimate weapon...to use against _me_. “ Practically gasping around it, the rumble of his voice becoming faded, wearier by the second. The weight of his confession left every word shot through with double meaning, heavy with all the things that weren't said.

“They just - they took her away from them and I couldn't even set _those_ timelines right. Because I couldn't just leave them _be_. I couldn't just disappear as I was meant to and just leave them _alone_.“ The Doctor practically hummed in pain, upper body tilting towards his knees as if he could capture it, hold it close. “I...I destroyed them _all_. River was driven completely, utterly mad. I don't even want to _know_ what Amy...Rory couldn’t even look me in the _face_ after everything and I really can't –”

He shuddered to a stop, looking disgusted with himself, gaze falling to his lap and his motionless hands like they had betrayed him somehow. His sorrow and horror over the Ponds, almost eclipsed by his insidious self-loathing, something he would normally tuck away, until those moments when he could be alone, just him and his thoughts. He looked too weary, embarrassed and old to be very moved by what Dean thought; though Winchester could almost see him pull his armor in close, prepared for Dean's anger, any horror or disgust justifiable in his eyes.

But all Dean could feel was a terrible, soul-deep pity.

For the Ponds, for River – and for the Doctor.

The Doctor who had laid himself open, laid himself bare for Dean to see; something that Dean thought probably hadn't happened in _centuries_ , if ever. The idea of it staggered and awed Dean, even as it left him more sorrowful than angry. They were both proud people, they knew what it took to speak like this, how vulnerable it made you.

And they knew how you _craved_ it, needing your hatred for yourself shored up – justified by those closest to you and sometimes...sometimes you _got_ it.

‘ _He won’t get that from me, though – he has to know that. He has to._ ’

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor blurted, sounding more tired than ever and twice as humiliated. “I shouldn’t have – I’m sorry. Can we just…can we just –“

_Go now? Forget this happened?_

Dean swallowed hard, hearing everything that wasn’t said, everything neither of them _could_ say. Pain like this wasn’t just worked through, you didn’t just _live_ with it. You either drowned in it, or dragged it behind you like a weight.

What could he _possibly_ say to make it easier? What could possibly make any of this _better_?

It stunned him to realize that the Doctor’s earlier statement was true. There was nothing Dean could do. The only thing this argument had accomplished was dragging the Doctor’s pain into the light; forcing him to face it. Dean was realizing that that was likely all he _had_ been doing…over, and over, and –

“ _Fuck_. Doctor,” he didn’t mean to sound so raw, so shocked. The slight ripple of movement over the Doctor’s shoulders told him he should have stayed quiet, that his silence was more of a balm than the bullets of his words.

‘ _That’s not what I meant. You know I don’t mean –_ ’

“No.” It was said quietly, that smooth, unruffled calm falling back into the cadence of his speech. Though it made Dean furious (at himself, at the man next to him), he also understood how the Doctor needed his armor, his neutrality. “Just...take me back to the TARDIS - please, Dean. There is no point in arguing this, it just _is_.”

Letting his aching eyes go unfocused for a moment, Dean licked his lips. His mouth was dry with all the things he could say but couldn't find the right words for. He just let the Doctor’s plea fall between them, let the silence fill the empty spaces. For a moment his own bones seemed too heavy, the feel of them a pressure under his skin that he could never escape from.  



End file.
